


until the last lion is tamed

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Series: pretty fuckin' happy [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Established Relationship, Growing Up, M/M, Phone Calls & Telephones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 20:38:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4319817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I am not <em>condescending</em> to you, you fucking drama queen. I’m <em>proud</em> of you,” Adam insists, furious, and aware that he doesn't sound proud so much as he sounds murderous, OR five ways adam and ronan got back together and one way they didn’t break up to begin with.</p><p> </p><p>  <em>“I THINK I NEVER LOVED YOU MORE” SAID THE RIFLE TO THE HEART. “LET’S BE HONEST, NO MATTER WHICH WAY I TURN IT’S GONNA BE REAL HARD TO PULL US APART”. – Squalloscope, “Rifle, Scissors, Stone”</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	until the last lion is tamed

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, there are probably going to be one or two more bits and pieces in this 'verse.

1.

Adam trips over an ironic PBR-drinker as he hurries to get away from a conversation about an ironic love of NASCAR, and suddenly, in that moment, he hates them, hates all of them, he hasn’t even been here a week, and he’s been feeling pretty positive through most of it, but tonight has been a series of last straws, and it’s that thought that sends him scrambling through his pockets for his new and barely-used cell-phone, and scrolling through his scanty contact list for a number he’d programmed in more in an ‘in case of emergency,’ way than based on any intention to call it any time soon.

Adam leans against the wall of the dorm hallway and listens to the phone ring and thinks that it’s a good thing Ronan probably doesn’t have _his_ new number saved, because then when he doesn't answer, which he won’t, Adam can just not answer any calls back, and Ronan will never need to know that it’s him who called at all. Ronan’s not going to answer, Adam think he should probably just hang up and get on with pretending this never happened, but the phone is still _ringing_ and Adam is tired and sort of sad in a way he thinks might be homesickness, and he needs a breath.

“Hello?”

Adam never expected to feel homesick at leaving Henrietta, but then he hadn’t expected to feel sad about leaving his parents’ home either—he’s a mess of contradicting emotions, and anyway, it’s not _Henrietta_ he misses, it’s Monmouth and the way it creaks and groans in the night, and Fox Way and the way the household there is always wary of him but somehow always still friendly. It’s the way Noah can pop up at any time, so near to the ley line and his bones. It’s the voice on the end of the phone line right now saying, “Hello? Parrish? Is everything okay?”

Ronan’s use of his last name shocks through him a little, even though it’s been a feature again ever since Adam said _if that’s really how you feel about it, maybe this is over,_ and Ronan hadn’t argued.

“Sorry, it’s not a big thing, I, uh, I shouldn't have called.”

Ronan snorts. “Maybe not, but you did. What is it?” He sounds the way he does when he’s feigning blankness, when he’s cooler than you and wants to make sure you know it, and Adam should hate it as much as he hated the crowd from his Survey Lit discussion group’s weird little after-party moments before, but instead it unknots something inside him that he hadn't even known was so tense as he slides down the wall he leans against to crouch near the floor.

Instead, he laughs, tells Ronan, “You wrecked me, I have no patience for rich assholes I’m not in love with anymore,” and he shouldn't have said that out loud, wouldn't have even said it _before_ they broke things off, but now Adam feels wild and reckless and tired and there’s nothing left to ruin, and he can’t see Ronan’s face through the phone, which makes now the perfect time.

Ronan’s breath catches, but he doesn't say any of the things Adam is both hoping and dreading that he might. Instead he says, “That mean I should be worried about how much patience you have for Gansey?” like he’s forgotten that there isn’t supposed to be anything there to be jealous anymore, that this is supposed to be over.

“Gansey’s rich, but he’s too nice to be an asshole,” Adam clarifies, instead of pointing out that Ronan’s given up his right to be jealous about anything, partially because if he does, he has a feeling Ronan will stop ignoring what _Adam_ just said and he’s not sure he’s ready to face that yet, and partially because it’s kind of nice, for a moment, to pretend they still have some kind of claim on each other.

“Shows what you know,” Ronan snorts, then asks, “So what happened?” His voice sounds a little rough, but his tone is gentle, the way he talks to Chainsaw when she’s spooked, or even to Matthew sometimes. “Were you doing that thing you do?”

He asks like it makes any sense at all, Adam can’t help but laugh a little, disbelieving. “That _thing_ I do?”

Ronan sounds unruffled, matter-of-fact, as he says, “Yeah, you know, that blank, untouchable thing you were doing for a long time before Cabeswater ever came along.”

Adam does not know, not really, but he thinks he can guess which of his expressions Ronan means. Still, “I do not do that.”

“You really do,” Ronan says, “It’s not a problem, I personally like it a lot. Stupid people never know what hit them, when you’re done with them.”

“And you think I’m meeting a lot of stupid people, here at Harvard?” Adam asks him.

“I bet the place is crawling with ‘em,” Ronan says, and Adam can hear the smile in his voice, the knife-edge on that smile, the way it inevitably looks as dangerous as a weapon.

After a moment, Adam offers, “You’re not _wrong_ ,” and lets himself relax a moment into the sound of Ronan’s laugh. After a moment, he admits, “I miss you.”

Ronan, who is, Adam reminds himself desperately, _no longer his boyfriend_ , offers, “Hey, you want me to come up? I can be there in eight hours, stay the weekend, leave Monday early, be back for my second class.”

Suddenly, Adam wants to say yes so desperately that he has to stop himself from saying no out of hand because surely if saying yes was the right thing to do, he wouldn’t want to so much. To buy himself a moment to figure out how to answer, and also because he’s curious, he asks, “How do you know? How long it’ll take, I mean.”

“I—” and Adam can see him in his head again, shuffling uncomfortably, glaring with anger at himself for giving himself away. “I just know, alright? Figuring out how long things take isn't _hard_ you know?”

He means that he looked it up, that he’s been thinking about coming up to see Adam since before Adam had called him, and Adam hates to admit it even to himself, but he doesn't really have any defense against that. “Okay,” he says, and then goes on a little louder, forcing a certainty he doesn't feel into his tone. “Okay, yeah, yes please, come and see me.”

2.

Ronan punches the wall, waits for Adam to say something, anything, even just _you’ll break your hand that way,_ even _don’t you dare_ , waits for him to even look shaken, because it’s _wrong_ , it has to be, to let this kind of violence have its way in front of someone like Adam who has seen so much danger. He looks unfazed, though, and something in Ronan shakes at that, because maybe that means it really is over, the way they said last night. He hadn’t thought it was true, but if he can’t even piss Adam off anymore, he’s not sure there’s enough left between them to sustain another semester-long absence like the one starting tomorrow. He punches the wall again, then slaps it, open hand, for good measure, to get the blood flowing back to his fingers.

Somehow, the lack of response is getting to him in a way that it normally wouldn’t, like there’s nothing satisfying in the cracking-plaster sound under Adam’s calm gaze. Ronan growls and shakes out his hand, restless.

“Are you done yet?” The horrible, calm blankness of Adam’s tone makes Ronan want to cry; wanting to cry makes him want to break things. “What if I’m not?” Ronan grumbles, and hates how tired his voice sounds as his hands clench into fists again.

“I can wait,” Adam answers, sounding disgustingly fucking serene, like half his mind is in the goddamned forest, Ronan hates it so much that, in that moment, he thinks there might even be a way he could hate Adam, too.

“Why don’t you—” the words burst out before he knows he’s going to say them, gusty and petulant and childish, “get mad or _something_.”

“I think I did enough of _that_ yesterday, don’t you?” Adam says, and he’s angry, Ronan thinks, but maybe only at himself, today, in the wake of his fury yesterday. It’s—Ronan isn’t sure whether he’s glad, that Adam looks so ashamed of that. It had been infuriating at the time, infuriating and a little frightening, pushing with his own anger and having someone to push back just as hard. Now, though, in the aftermath, he isn’t sure—he sighs.

“What are you doing here, Parrish?”

“I didn’t want to leave with things the way they were,” Adam says, and then, halting, like he has to force the words from his own mouth, “and I wanted to apologize.”

“Does that mean you’re not going?” Ronan can’t resist pushing. Adam has been offered a internship over his winter break this year, instead of coming back to Henrietta, to the Barns, to Ronan. Ostensible, the fight had been about something else, but at this point, so close to Adam’s departure time back to school for the fall, Ronan doesn’t see the point in pretending.

“I’m sorry I can’t be the person who would not go for you,” Adam says, ducking his head, and Ronan thinks there’s something awful in his tone, something miserable. “I can’t, though, I’m not—and if that’s what you _need_ , I can understand that,” he goes on, raising his head to look Ronan dead in the eye, so brave, this boy, _Christ_. “But if you—if maybe you don’t need that so—so much, if maybe you still just want me instead—I’d be back for Christmas itself, Ronan, and it’s closer than school, I’d be back every weekend—”

He’s pleading, Ronan realizes. Proud Adam Parrish who has the need to earn everything he gets so wired into his bones he has to work himself up to accepting a Christmas gift is pleading with Ronan like he thinks _he’s_ the one losing Ronan, like Ronan’s not the one who’s been feeling Adam slip away for months now.

“I don’t—” Ronan starts, and sees Adam’s face fall, so he hurries on. Words have never been his friend, not for big things like this, but maybe if he can string enough of them together fast enough, he can make Adam see—“I don’t need you to be anyone else, I—shit, it’s okay, it’s _okay_ ,” Ronan cradles his now-aching hand in to his chest, says, “I still think you don’t need them, any of them, but if it’s what you _want_ , it’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

“Just like that?” Adam asks it like it’s a serious question and Ronan—he said it, he did, he doesn’t know why Adam doesn’t know by now that Ronan doesn’t say thing he doesn't mean, things that aren't true—saying it is a promise, and Ronan will _make_ it true. He holds Adam’s gaze long and steady enough to prove he’s serious, then says, “Well, as long as you bring me back a snow globe, anyway. If you’re leaving me for our nation’s capitol, I expect to be properly fucking compensated in cheesy-ass souvenirs.”

As he says it, a smile builds, breaks, and spreads its way across Adam’s face, and by the time Ronan has stopped talking, he’s grinning. “Sounds reasonable,” Adam says.

3.

A few hours after the crash, when Ronan opens his eyes in the hospital, Declan is there. There’s some kind of monitor beeping, and his whole body aches in a dull, muted way, and Ronan knows exactly where he is, doesn't even have a moment of dissonance, but he focuses in on his surroundings anyway so that he doesn't have to think about the fact that it’s Declan who’s there, and not—ah, fuck it. “Please tell me no one called Parrish,” Ronan says, a little surprised by how weak and raw his own voice sounds. “I don’t think I could take the smugness right now.”

Declan starts and looks up from his phone, but he only looks surprised for a second before he recovers enough to say, “If you think that kid would be anything but heartbroken to hear that anything happened to you, you’re dumber than I thought.”

 _Heartbroken_ , Ronan thinks, derisive. Declan is at his very best and worse when he sounds like a bad knock-off version of their father. He also doesn’t know Adam very well, or he’d know that all of Adam’s worry and hurt and yes, maybe even _heartbreak_ at hearing about this would be tempered with fury that Ronan could be so stupid not just once, or even once a _week_ but a hundred times over, till even his ridiculous luck had to run out. 

Ronan knows, though—he’s heard it a hundred times, had it murmured in his ear as Adam carefully sponged blood away from his face after a bar fight— _can’t you go one week without courting death?_ and had it shouted at him down the phone line after Gansey tattled about Ronan’s last DUI, had heard it followed by a muted, _I can’t keep doing this_ the last time. _Not even for you_ Adam had said. _I can’t live like this._

“But did anybody _call_ him,” Ronan snarls, helpless and not sure what answer he was even hoping for.

“I’m not sure,” Declan begins, and Ronan is ready to dismiss anything else he has to say as utterly useless, but then he finishes, “Last I heard, Gansey seemed to think _you_ should be the one to call and tell him, like maybe _that_ would be enough of a wakeup call to keep you from pulling this shit again.”

“That _fucking_ —”

“He’s worried about you,” Declan interrupts. “God knows why, you know anyone else would have been done with your petulant, James Dean bullshit years ago.” _Like Adam is,_ Ronan thinks dully, and, “Last time I heard, he hadn’t told him yet,” Declan says, “But I don’t really know, I’ve been—distracted.”

And right, of course he has been, he’s been dealing with the bullshit administrative realities of Ronan in the hospital, and probably also, “Matthew?” Ronan asks, a little belatedly. He feels a pang of guilt for not asking sooner.

Declan snorts like he agrees. “Yeah, and would it kill you to think of _him_ when you’re pulling this shit? I know you won’t for me, and apparently you won’t for Gansey or Noah, and even to save that weird little relationship, apparently that wasn’t enough either, but what about Matthew?”

“Who told you—” Ronan feels exhausted, suddenly, like he’s fading from the inside out. “Who says that’s why Parrish—and anyway, he’d still make everything okay for Matthew if I—like we did for mom, you know?” Ronan can’t keep his eyes open, can’t finish his sentences, can’t imagine he’ll be awake longer than another minute or two.

“No one had to tell me,” Declan lies, and then, when Ronan glares at him through slitted eyes, admits, “Noah. He’s worried, too. He thinks—” Ronan knows what Noah thinks, and it amounts to a whole lot of half-lazy, half-furious ‘life is wasted on the living’ jokes. What he doesn’t know is what Noah is doing going around telling his _brother_. “But anyway, that’s not the point,” Declan goes on, “because that’s not what I meant and you _know it_. It’s—I’m glad you’ve got everything figured out so Matthew will be okay if anything happens to you, but what about the part where he’s your brother, and he’d be _upset_?”

“You’re my brother, too,” Ronan thinks, stupidly, then realizes he’s said it out loud after a moment, and _damn_ , what kind of drugs do they have him on, here? Still, now he’s said it, he’s not going to try and take it back, which would be as good as admitting he’s not entirely in control of himself right now—though the way his eyelids are starting to slide closed might be a bit of a give-away.

Declan is silent for a while, but just as Ronan’s eyelids win, and his eyes slip closed, and his thoughts start to go hazy, he hears the rustling sound of Declan climbing to his feet and stepping closer, running a hand over Ronan’s shaved head.

He’s mostly sure he’s still awake when he hears Declan murmur, hand still warm against Ronan’s scalp, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m your brother, too. Get some rest, little brother. Dream yourself some goddamned common sense, could you?”

…

When Ronan wakes again, Adam is there, elbows propped on the hospital bed, head resting in his hands, eyes cast down. “Gansey called you?” Ronan rasps, and Adam raises his head to look at Ronan with tired eyes.

“No,” he replies, subdued but not calm, all quiet, banked fury, “But he fucking _should_ have, and we’re definitely going to have words about it later.”

“Noah?” Ronan asks, because all of the sudden it seems very important to pinpoint what Adam is doing here.

“Declan,” Adam admits, then laughs, a bitter, ugly little thing. “How did we get to the point where I have to hear what happens to you from _Declan_?”

On the one hand, Ronan knows exactly what he means, but on the other, “When you said you were done, probably. Declan probably shouldn’t have called you at all.” Ronan doesn’t even know if he means it, but the part of him that is tired and aching and _hurt_ , and has been for longer than his body has been aching to match it, and he’s not in the mood to play nice.

“Yeah,” Adam agrees, after a pause and Ronan wonders, for a flash, if he’s just going to leave. Instead, he asks, “Can you move?” which Ronan isn’t exactly sure what to do with.

“Well, I don’t think I’ll be running any marathons,” he replies, letting his confusion creep into his tone a little, “But I _can_ wiggle my toes.”

“Move over, okay?” Adam asks him, and it’s both completely obvious why and completely incomprehensible, and he _can’t be_ , but he _is_ —Ronan shifts his body a few inches over, away from Adam, and then Adam is slipping off his boots and squeezing onto the narrow hospital bed, lying on his side to take up as little space as possible, knees just barely pressed to Ronan’s thigh through the sheet, breath on Ronan’s shoulder, hair against Ronan’s cheek.

“You left,” Ronan reminds him, because it may not feel like it now, but he _did_. “You’re only here because Declan called you, because Declan thinks—”

“Declan thinks maybe I can convince you to have some kind of sense of self-preservation,” Adam agrees. “Just like Gansey thought reminding you that you’ve got a family would. Just like Noah’s going to hit you with Blue’s tears, and Blue’s going to yell at you for scaring Gansey. They think it’s about you needing something outside yourself to hold onto.”

“You don’t, though,” Ronan tries, testing, and feels the brush of soft, dusty, blond-brown hair against his face as Adam shakes his head.

“It’s about you,” he says, “It has to be about you, I know.” He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and when he goes on, he sounds a little sadder, “When I said I couldn’t do this, that was about me, though. I thought maybe if I did, I wouldn’t have to feel like—like _this_ when something like this happened.”

Something about his tone cuts at Ronan’s heart. He asks, “And did it help?”

Again, he can feel the movement against the scratchy-soft hospital pillow-case as Adam shakes his head. After another moment, Adam offers, “I can go?”

For a moment, Ronan thinks about it. He wonders if it wouldn't be better for both of them, easier, if maybe just a little more time and distance wouldn't have exactly the effect Adam had been hoping for. He can’t make himself say the words, though, can’t make himself nod, can’t bear to agree. Instead, he reaches out, fumbling, until his hand finds one of Adam’s. “No,” he says, but it comes out soft, small, so he tries again. “No, uh, you could stay. If you wanted.”

4.

“Ronan, come on,” Adam yells through the closed, driver-side door of the BMW.

Ronan cracks the window just enough to snap out of it, “I _told_ you you were dead to me if you tried to make a big thing out of this, Parrish.”

Adam thumps his hand down on the roof of the BMW and growls, “ _Excuse_ me for being proud of you, you _fucking asshole_ ,” and reflects briefly that a four-and-a-half year relationship with Ronan Lynch may have had an effect on his emotional responses to things.

Adam is wearing his least-hated suit in the Virginia August heat, trying to talk some sense into Ronan through a locked car door because it’s an hour and a half until the beginning of the little, end-of-summer graduation at Virginia State for students who were a couple of credits short of graduation at the end of the spring semester, and for some reason, Adam had thought it would be nice for them to go, since Ronan finished that last bio lab a few weeks before, and had a diploma heading his way in the mail.

“I don’t need your condescension, you smarmy, Harvard, _asshole_ ,” Ronan hisses, and really, Adam wonders, is _that_ what this is about?

“I am not _condescending_ to you, you fucking drama queen. I’m _proud_ of you,” Adam insists, furious, and aware that he doesn't sound proud so much as he sounds murderous, “Because you _did_ this thing, even though you don’t give a shit about it, because you know it’s the responsible thing to do, and if that’s not maturity I don’t know what the fuck is.”

“Wash your mouth out with soap,” Ronan growls, but he does unlock the car door, so Adam is willing to call it a win.

5.

Adam hasn’t heard from Ronan in over a month and a half when his phone rings in the middle of the night. If there was any justice in the world, it would be waking him from a dead sleep, here, at almost two in the morning, but in reality, he’s only just let himself stop studying, and hasn’t yet managed to get the running tally of dates versus precedents to stop running through his mind when he hears it ring.

He checks who’s calling, but even seeing Ronan’s name flashing across the screen isn't quite enough to prepare him for the reality of Ronan’s voice when he answers. Of course, that might have more to do with the fact that he was, stupidly, expecting Ronan to open with something innocuous like _hello_ , or, even more likely, for it to actually be Noah or Gansey or even Matthew calling from Ronan’s phone.

What he’s not expecting is the blunt, combative, “Of fucking _course_ I respect you,” though probably he should have been, since it was the response he was waiting for all through that last fight, waiting for but never getting, until now anyway.

It’s what he gets, though, anyway, and he’s close enough to the way he felt then that he doesn't have to reach much to call up the bruised anger he’d felt the last time they’d tried to have this conversation as he replies, “You’ve sure got a fucked up way of showing it, then.”

“I don’t fucking tiptoe around you because I know you can push back if you need to,” Ronan says, and Adam thinks that’s probably true, and there are even times when he appreciates it.

Still, though, “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I don’t always _want_ to fight to be heard every time I don’t agree with you? Just because I _can_ doesn't mean it feels good.”

Ronan sighs. “I—yeah.” It sounds like he’s going to say something else, but he doesn't, and the silence stretches, and finally Adam has to ask, “Why are you calling, Ronan?”

“Gansey—” Ronan clears his throat, pulls out his blankest, most sardonic tone. “Gansey says you’ve moved on?”

Adam has to laugh at that, because of course, of _course_ that was what it took. “Yeah,” he tells Ronan, thinking of the casual, easy way things fell apart with Abby, “But it didn't stick.” He tries to pretend that there’s nothing in him that thrills at Ronan’s sigh of relief.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t still _mean_ everything I said,” Adam says, half for Ronan’s benefit, yes, but half for his own, because whether he’s been admitting it or not, he’s been wanting this, this almost-inevitable-feeling resolution, but he can’t let the relief that it’s actually happening overtake the fact that he actually had a point, and it’s not one he wants to let go.

“I know,” Ronan tells him, and then, halting, “I can—I get it, I think. I can do better. Because I _do_ —”

Adam knows he shouldn’t, but something about the agonized strain in Ronan’s voice at trying to _talk_ about it hurts him as much to listen to as it must to say it, so he cuts him off with, “I know.”

“So, okay?” Ronan asks. “Are we okay?” and Adam tries to make himself take a moment to think it through, but he can only hold the pause for seconds before he’s answering, “Yeah. Yeah, we’re okay.”

+1

Adam is sitting outside on the front steps leading up to the porch when the BMW pulls down the long drive, moving slower than Ronan usually goes, and he’s watching intently from the moment Ronan pulls up close enough to see his face, or probably for longer, but he doesn't move or say anything until after Ronan kills the engine, sits in the front seat of a moment to psyche himself up for a conversation now that he’s calmed himself down from their argument, gets out of the car and takes a moment to lock it behind him, which he would normally never bother to do out here at the Barns, but he’s buying himself time, and Adam must know it, but he still doesn’t say anything, not as Ronan finally turns away from the car, walks towards him, then turns to sit beside him on the step.

After he’s been sitting there a moment, though, next to where Adam is holding himself stiff and apart, Adam sighs, ducks his head for a moment, shoulder tucked behind Ronan’s own in the humid darkness, to press his forehead against the sticky-hot leather of Ronan’s jacket, till Ronan can feel the weight of him against his shoulder, and says, “Hey.”

“Hey.” Ronan rests a hand on Adam’s knee. This isn't how he pictured the rest of the night going, but he’s starting to sense that the moment is a little bit more fragile than he meant it to be, and maybe they both need the reassurance of the touch. “Is Seph in bed?”

“Yeah,” Adam nods, redundant, like he doesn’t know what to say, then blurts, “Are you _back_ -back, then?”

“I—what?” Ronan feels like there’s got to be something he’s missing, here.

“Because if it was just—if you need to be away from me, _I_ could leave, I mean, it’s your house—”

Yeah, definitely missing something, “Parrish, what the hell?”

“Well it is.”

“It isn’t,” Ronan insists, “It’s _our_ house, and I wasn’t _leaving_ , Jesus, I just _left_ —”

“Now _there’s_ a distinction—”

“Did you think I was _leaving you_? Over where Seph should go to _preschool_?” Ronan tightens his hand over Adam’s knee.

“Well, I mean,” Adam fumbles, and then, “You _left_. You’ve never walked out on a fight like that before, I thought—”

All of the sudden, though, Ronan can see what Adam thought, and why he thought it. He says, more gently than before, “I just didn't want—I don't want to yell in front of her. I don't want her to see that, or to see us like that.”

They sit there a second as Adam takes that in, and then he relaxes against Ronan’s side, and Ronan feels like he can breathe again.

“I wouldn’t just _leave_ ,” Ronan insists, and feels Adam nod again. “I told you, I told you before Seph was even born. I’m in. This is it, for me.” If there was any justice in the world, Ronan thinks, it’s the kind of sentiment he never would have needed to say out loud, but if Adam needs to hear it, Ronan can say it.

“Yeah, I—me too,” Adam says, and all of the sudden Ronan understands why he needed to say it out loud, because his own relief at hearing it is immense, he feels like he could drown in it.

“Good, then,” he says, squeezing Adam’s knee again. “Now let’s go in, the bugs are eating me alive. We can go back to the knock-down drag-out in the morning.”

Adam laughs, pushes himself to his feet, and holds out a hand to pull Ronan up. “I should have just listened to our three-year-old,” he tells Ronan. “She said, ‘you’re worried. Don't be.’” Adam shakes his head a little at that.

“Yeah well, she’s a smart little lady,” says Ronan, fond.

“Yeah, well, she also told me _you’d_ make us all breakfast tomorrow,” because Seph has figured out, somewhere along the way, that presenting the things she wants from them as fact, like she’s prophesizing them, is a good way to make them happen.

The thing is, she’s usually right. “Like I said,” Ronan says. “Smart kid we’ve got, there.”


End file.
